Poet and novelist Marly Youmans reads four of her poems. God’s first act in the book of Genesis is to call the world into being by speech, to give names to things. And the same is true for the human creatures that God makes: the most original task given to us as human beings is to name the creatures of this world. This is, for one religious tradition at least, where all poetry begins. On this first day of A New Decameron, poet Marly Youmans repeats this original human gesture in four poems. Youmans’ poetry and prose luxuriates in both giving names to things and finding them. Marly’s new novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius, 2020), set in Puritan Massachusetts in 1690, sometimes seems to revel in the sheer wonder of found words, and the act of finding a lexicon of words now mostly lost to us is an experience of stumbling into a new world, a world in which we find ourselves already named. A world of wonders.

Boccaccio’s “Decameron” is set during the Black Death in 1348. 10 Florentines escape their city to survive the plague, consoling one another with stories. Why shouldn’t we do the same? We are going to try. 100 stories from some of America's most wonderful writers, in audio form and readable online along with contributions from visual artists. "We do not have to live as if we are alone." --Wendell Berry